


Happy in this House

by clockheartedcrocodile



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Consensual Mansplaining, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Halloween, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, mentions of Grindelwald
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 14:57:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12235191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockheartedcrocodile/pseuds/clockheartedcrocodile
Summary: Percival Graves and Credence Barebone retire to the old Graves Estate, now that Percival's nerves can no longer endure the noise and bustle of the city.





	Happy in this House

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never actually posted a fic before, so this is a new experience for me. I hope you enjoy it! I can be found on Tumblr at @clockhearted-crocodile if you’d like to chat. This is the prompt-fill for Trick 25.
> 
> This fic is perhaps 10% Cursed Supernatural Artifact and 90% Graves and Credence being uncomfortable.

Percival Graves did not feel safe in New York.

It didn’t take long for Credence to notice. At the slightest sound from the street outside— the screech of a wheel, the surprised snort of a horse— Graves would tense in his arms, his eyes flickering from window to door and back.

It _galled_ Credence that he couldn’t make him feel cared for in his own apartment, after Graves had done so much to take care of Credence. At the end of each day Credence would perk up as he heard the key in the lock, then the scraping of boots on the mat, the cloak, off, hung up and put away. Graves would fall into his arms and Credence would feel the tension knotting up his back

He told him once, as they lay on the couch together, that Grindelwald hadn’t even tried to catch him in the field. He’d taken him from his apartment. “Cracked it right open,” Graves slurred, his fists twisted tightly in Credence’s shirt. “Opened it up and scraped me out . . . like the meat from a walnut.”

It grew worse as time went on. The sound of an unfamiliar footstep on the stairs outside was enough to set him fluttering from one window to another in his urge to Protect The Homestead. He was frightened of his own shadow, and the worst part of it was, Credence knew he had good reason to be. His shadow had, for a time, not been his at all.

Then there was the drinking, which had been an occasional indulgence before the nightmares started. Then it became as addictive as magic. When drunk, Graves was bitter and forgetful, and guilt-stricken at any attempt to show him tenderness. Alcohol gave him a dead-eyed dullness that Credence didn’t like, a slow winding-down of the focused intensity of his personality until his usual flood of energy was reduced to a trickle. Graves was a man defined by the intensity of his passions, a man who did not do things by half-measures, and firewhiskey killed that man quickly and regularly. On particularly bad days, he would talk about the War, and Credence would hold him as he mumbled something about his old regiment. He always listened, even though all the stories ended the same way.

Credence _hated_ firewhiskey. Hated it like he hated his mother, like he hated Grindelwald. He _hated_ it, and Graves hated it too.

There they were, the two evils that plagued his life. Firewhiskey and city noise. Credence thought about both as he leaned on the windowsill, gazing out at the surprisingly pleasant view of New York that Graves’ apartment provided. He could see the distant green-capped peak of the Woolworth Building, where even now his dearest love was measuring out his life in paperwork, sheet by sheet. The crisp autumn air seemed to nibble at his skin, giving rise to gooseflesh.

Firewhiskey and city noise, firewhiskey and city noise.

 _Well,_ Credence thought, _one of those can be solved easily enough. If I’m lucky, the other will follow._

Of course, Graves would never think to leave the city by himself, but Credence, who was very proud of his powers of observation, knew precisely how to get him to do it anyway.

Credence had realized something early on in their relationship that Graves’ co-workers had failed to notice after years of working with him, and it was this: Graves liked to show his affection through favors.

It was his way of showing his approval. He paid for meals, and held open doors, and never failed to answer any question Credence had for him. He was even known to arrive at work with coffees for the aurors that had pleased him the most the previous day. He worked long hours at a job where flexibility was not encouraged, and slack was not freely given; it was as though all the little indulgences and allowances he encouraged in his off-duty hours were a way to balance it out.

Graves did not, however, extend these small courtesies to himself.

Swiftly on the heels of this knowledge came Credence’s realization that if he wanted Graves to do something for himself, he would have to make it seem like it was actually for Credence’s own benefit. So he did. Credence wanted regular meals with Graves, and so Graves ate regularly. Credence wanted Graves to set aside his paperwork when he was at home, and so the paperwork remained, (for the most part,) at the office. Credence wanted to be in bed, lights out, by midnight, and so Graves began sleeping regularly.

So naturally, when Credence casually mentioned one day that his years spent handing out pamphlets on the worst streets in the city had left him feeling ill at ease in New York, Graves suggested that what they needed most was a few weeks in the country. Credence watched him write a letter to President Picquery from the hallway outside his study, and smiled.

 

Percival Graves had not been to the family estate in many years, not since the Old Widow Graves had turned him away. _“It is your responsibility as my only heir to carry on the family name,”_ she had said. _“I will have no invert under my roof.”_

He had thought that when he returned, his hand tightly entwined with that of his young lover, he would feel some satisfaction. _How do you like me now, you old, dead harpy._ But he found that he felt nothing at all, nothing but the same weary pity that he had felt when he read her obituary in the _New York Ghost_. The house was his birthright, and now, his property. It felt like inheriting a mausoleum.

It was, however, completely secure. The Old Widow Graves was notoriously paranoid, even by Graves standards. She had insisted on doing all her own spellwork, turning away countless skilled craftswizards in favor of enchanting her own windows and doors. The house itself was surrounded by several acres of tree-fringed grassland, stippled with small ponds and the tell-tale pockmarks of rabbit warrens.

_(“You see that, Cree?” He had said, as they rattled along the unpaved road that cut through the dry, withered autumn grass, “How the trees grow in such a precise circular curve around the boundaries of the estate? They won’t grow within the sphere of Influence, you see. They grow right up against it and then stop.”_

_“I thought most trees responded well to magic,” said Credence, leaning forward to catch a glimpse of the curving tree line through the carriage window._

_“Most magics,” Graves agreed, looking grim. “Not hers, though.”)_

The Graves Estate was far from the noise and clutter of non-magical New York, and the autumn air was crisp and welcoming to them as they stepped down from their carriage. Graves turned to pay the driver as Credence looked up at the building, and he felt a sudden pang of shame at the walls worn down by the wind, and the dark, dusty glass of the windows. Seeing it now, years from when he’d last seen it, it looked like a cracked painting of the house it used to be.

They stood there for a long moment, after the carriage had rattled away, just looking up at the building. Graves grew more and more uncomfortable with every passing second, acutely aware that this was Credence’s first glimpse at this private part of Graves’ life. It felt like suffering through one of Picquery’s mandatory department-wide physicals, standing awkwardly in his skivvies while healers frowned at their clipboards and made him turn his head and cough.

When he dared to glance over at Credence, he realized that Credence had been watching his face. He looked away hurriedly. “It’s going to need some work,” he mumbled, coughing into his fist. “It hasn’t been taken care of the way a house of this grandeur deserves to be.”

“I agree,” Credence said softly, still watching him.

“I think we can be happy here, though,” Graves continued, a note of hope in his voice. He began walking up the front steps, looking like a man ascending to the gallows. “I haven’t set foot in this place in years, and I . . .” He paused on the final step, and let out a shaky laugh. In an instant, Credence was beside him, both of their bags in one hand and the other coming to rest on Graves’ shoulder. “. . . I just want this to be good place for us. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do. And it will be.”

Graves straightened up a little. Credence could see the wheels beginning to turn in his head, formulating a plan of action. “There’ll be a lot of manual labor involved.”

Credence, who had long since discovered that his definition of manual labor and a wizard’s definition of manual labor were not quite the same thing, shrugged. “Where do you want to start?”

“Her study,” Graves said firmly, and ah, there was that intensity of purpose that Credence so adored. “If I remember correctly, that was where she kept the good liquor. And I’m throwing that out first.”

 

“Were these your grandmother’s journals?”

Graves glanced up. “Hmm? Yes.”

“May I look at one of them?”

“If you’d like. She wrote about everything,” said Graves, as Credence continued to empty the drawers of her desk. “A meticulous journal-keeper, even when Mr. Graves was alive.”

Credence nodded slowly. Graves rarely talked about his family, but when he did, Credence knew Mr. Graves meant his grandfather. Then there was the Old Widow Graves, his grandmother, as she was known now. He’d called his mother Mrs. Graves, even growing up, but Papa was just Papa, and always had been.

“She was also terribly infirm,” Graves continued, frowning at the box of photographs he was crouching beside. “She animated half the house to make up for it. Can’t you smell it?”

Credence took a deep breath. He smelled nothing but dust and damp, and the warm, nose-tickling scent of Graves’ aftershave.

The Old Widow Graves had a study on the northern side of the building, three flights of stairs away from the nearest sitting room. Graves had told him before they came that she had been an incredibly social person, despite having a strong distaste for people in general. “Her study was her peace-and-quiet room,” he had said. “No one was allowed in, with the exception of certain members of the family, and even then, by invitation alone.”

Graves’ choice to clean out her study first was, Credence suspected, as much out of spite as it was out of a desire get rid of all the liquor in the house. Although they had had a grand old time taking turns pitching bottles out the window behind her desk, seeing how far they could throw them without resorting to magic.

“My grandmother had very particular ideas about what was considered respectable,” Percival was saying, jerking Credence out of his thoughts. “I’m surprised she didn’t have this house cursed to set fire to any . . . any love of mine who crossed its thresh-hold.”

Credence frowned, and flipped the journal over to examine its spine. He flipped it open to a recent page.

_". . . however, I have not entirely lost my edge, no matter what Mrs. W—— has to say about it. The Old Blood is as warm in my veins as ever it was before._

_"I have grown accustomed to speaking with my mirrors, and have enchanted them to speak back. They have been most agreeable companions, and they do not bother me with politics, as Mrs. J——— has been wont to do, and they are not half so lewd as Mr. F———, who, I have heard from Mrs. W——, is going to France to live in sin with some no-maj of poor breeding._

_"My mirrors have agreed that this behavior is completely unfit behavior for man of such good blood. They are growing more agreeable all the time, I must say. My enchantments are as strong now as they were when I was young. The mirrors are more like me than I am myself._

_"I think that, when I die, I should like to be reborn in a mirror."_

Credence shut the book. “Percival?”

“Hmm?”

“Are there really curses like that?”

“Like what?”

“Curses that can . . . that can _go off_ after a certain event. Like crossing a threshold, or talking to a mirror.”

Graves, who had been sorting photographs into relations and not-relations, straightened up. “Sometimes,” he said slowly. “It’s not easy to do, but it can be done. You’ve seen the arithmantic sigils inscribed around my office door?”

Credence nodded.

“Those are symbols of protection, and they only go off if there’s a threat, one that was specified by the spell caster at the time of the symbol’s laying,” he continued, moving smoothly into a full lecture. “If specified, then yes, crossing a threshold or touching a mirror would set them off. It’s called Delayed Action, and it’s not an easy thing to do. Laying an arithmantic sigil has to be done right the first time, and even then, there’s no way to know if it’s been done correctly without setting off the curse, and then you’d have to do it all over again.”

From there he went off on a long tangent about the power of the spoken word, and the significance of “Influence,” and “Intent,” as they had been called at Ilvermorny. Credence listened to every word.

He had long since gotten over his crippling fear of asking questions. Being too nosy or too curious about things which did not concern him had been thoroughly beaten out of him by the time he had first seen Mr. Graves conjure a flower and whisper, “magic.”

Now though, Credence was full of questions, and felt a private, satisfied glow every time Graves perked up to address one. Suddenly, such basic elementary school knowledge as how-to-turn-a-match-into-a-needle and who-is-the-Minister-of-Magic made Graves feel like the most interesting person in the room.

Credence loved that something so simple as a question could make Graves feel like that. The fact that Graves had a Teacher Voice was no small incentive either.

“But I’m not really a good teacher on the subject,” Graves finished, which was how he finished most of his lectures. He returned to his box of photographs, most of which had been yawning behind his back. “You’d be better off speaking with one of the arithmantists if you really wanted to learn the minutia of the thing.”

“Ah yes,” said Credence, “the mathemagicians.”

“Don’t call them that.”

“They like it. Avery from Accounts said he liked it.”

“Avery from Accounts knows more about this kind of thing than I do,” Graves said quietly, up to his elbows in photographs. “You should ask him.”

“I didn’t want to ask Avery from Accounts,” Credence said. “I wanted to ask you.”

Graves didn’t look up, but Credence caught a glimpse of the back of his neck flushing red. He grinned and looked away.

 

There were seven bedrooms scattered throughout the house, excluding the nursery, and Graves picked the west-facing one. “We’ll have an excellent view of the sunset from here,” he said warmly, pulling aside the curtains and immediately stirring up a cloud of dust, “and the nearest water closet is just across the hall . . .”

Credence, who had been concerned about getting lost in the middle of the night, nodded gratefully and began to shed his coat. “Where can I hang- Oh!” He recoiled sharply, his face screwed up in disgust. “What . . . what is that?”

Graves frowned, then glanced at the curtains. Now that he was looking closer, he could see little knots of thick, dark hair clumping in the folds. Some of them had visible eyes. “Oh!” He dropped the curtains. “Doxys.”

Credence now looked confused as well as disgusted.

“It’s alright, it’s fine,” Graves said, drawing his wand. “They won’t bite us unless we disturb them.”

“Are they . . . are they normal?” Credence said, cautiously creeping forward.

“They’re vermin,” Graves said. “Perhaps we’d better find a different room for the night. They won’t hurt us though,” he clarified, on seeing Credence’s alarmed look.

Credence leaned forward to squint at them. One of them extended a long, hairy leg, as though in greeting.

“Ugh,” he said.

“Ugh,” Graves smiled in agreement. “Do you want me to get rid of them for you?”

“No, no, I-” Credence said absently, backing away from the curtains and placing his jacket on the bed. “I don’t want to trouble you, I-”

He seemed to stop, and think something over for a moment.

“Yes, actually,” he said firmly. “I think I would. I don’t like the idea of them . . . looking at me. At us. With those eyes.”

Graves, who was secretly relieved and thinking of burning the curtains outright, began to roll up his sleeves. “I’ll have them gone by the time you’re finished.”

 

As Credence started the tap running in the bath, it occurred to him that he might hate this house. He didn’t like the darkness, how it crept insidiously down every hallway. He didn’t like the kitchen, when they walked past it on the way upstairs and he caught a glimpse of the silhouettes of hanging pots and pans. He particularly didn’t like the portraits, which scowled silently at him as they passed, though the sight of Graves scowling at them in return made it almost worth it.

Every inch of the place spoke of stagnant wealth. He wondered, not for the first time, what he had to offer to the heir of this kind of estate.

And what _did_ he have to offer, really? Not magic. His magic was wild, uncontrollable. Wands exploded at his touch. The simple effort of lifting a teacup sent it shattering against the ceiling. Graves could repair such damage with a wave of his hand. Not even his wand, his hand. Just his hand.

Once, when he had been teaching Credence from _McAuley’s Theories and Essentials for Young Wizards,_ Graves had lifted him gently off the ground with a single gesture. The feeling of being suspended there, touched by nothing, cradled by the _force of Graves’ will alone_ had been almost too much for him to bear. He had flown before, when his shadows turned him inside out, but that was out of anger, and fear. Flying was a thing born of frustration. This was born from something else.

At the time, he’d wanted to do the same thing for Graves. He’d wanted to lift him, gently, with a gesture. The thought of shattering him like a teacup against the ceiling quickly killed that desire.

Credence wondered, as he turned to the washstand, what Graves would’ve thought had he known how Credence had to second-guess his every desire before he acted on it, for fear of harming him.

“I imagine he’d pity you, if he knew,” said the woman in the mirror.

Credence, to his credit, didn’t scream. He stood frozen, gripping the sides of the washstand in a white-knuckled grip. He stared into her eyes, separated from his own by only a thin sheer of mirror-glass, and swallowed hard.

Perhaps this was just another thing to get used to, like the moving photographs, or the books that read the same back to front as they did front to back. Maybe there were always people in wizarding mirrors, standing there all day long and telling you what they think of you when you go to check your hair. He remembered, dimly, that the Old Widow Graves had written something about mirrors in her journal. What was it? _What was it?_

“How did you see my thoughts?” He stammered, thinking of Queenie.

“I’m a looking-glass. I see a lot of things. And I don’t much _care_ ,” this she said with a spit, “for shameless boys making inverts out of respectable wizards. That may be how _Mr. Fischer_ does things but it is not how a Graves does it.”

Behind him, the tap was still running. The bath was filling up. He wondered, with that peculiar clarity of thought that the fear of the unknown brings, if he should go and turn it off.

 

Credence had been gone for some time, and Graves could hear the water running. He was always so fastidious with his hygiene, now that he could bathe whenever he pleased. Last Christmas Graves had bought him a collection of enchanted soaps which had different properties depending on the scent, or even changed scents depending on the wearer’s mood. The vanilla one could only be smelled by the wizard who’d bathed in it, so they’d tried it together, and had experienced the confusing but thrilling sensation of being able to find each other by scent across three floors of the Woolworth.

Graves, who’d been distracted by the thought of those soaps, and wishing he’d packed them, suddenly remembered that Christmas was less than two months away. He’d have to start thinking of something newer and still more extraordinary to keep Credence’s interest. His hair was only getting grayer, after all, and the hearts of young men were easily won and easily lost.

 _Don’t think like that,_ he thought bitterly, then “Stop. Don’t think like that.”

Saying it out loud didn’t help.

To distract himself, he began to dig through his trunk for a towel. When he’d found one, he put it over his shoulder and crossed the hall to knock lightly on Credence’s door.

“Cree?” he said gently. “Cree, I charmed the curtains outside and put them in the pond. Doxys hate water,” he said, wishing he knew some obscure, interesting fact about doxys. _Mr. Scamander would know,_ he thought bitterly. “I’ll fish them out tomorrow. Or we could buy new ones, if you’d like. Cree?”

Graves’ hand rested on the doorknob and gently pushed the door open.

He stepped back abruptly, and swore. The floor was completely flooded, the tap running at full pressure and water steadily pouring over the edges of the tub.

Moreover, the room was empty.

Graves hurriedly drew his wand and flicked it sharply, turning off the water. He flicked it again, and the floor dried, filling the air with a thick cloud of steam.

“Credence?” Graves said stupidly, into the steam.

He glanced back down the hall, first one way, then the other, and then crossed it to check the bedroom again. He felt like he’d been made a fool of somehow.

Back in the bathroom, the air had cleared, and thick condensation had settled on the mirror and the little window over the tub. Graves frowned, checked the tub. It was empty.

“Credence?” He said cautiously. “Are you . . . hiding somewhere?”

The thought of it was humiliating in how anxious it made him. Of course, theoretically there was no harm in the idea. Credence was playful by nature, and these kinds of games usually ended very pleasurably for both parties. But _Credence,_ whom he had come to trust with _everything_ — his body, his intimacy, his nightmares— jumping out at him even in the name of play . . . that was an unpleasant thought. What if Graves hexed him by accident?

“Are you . . . playing?” he said cautiously, feeling stupider by the minute. “Is this a . . . couples thing?”

No reply.

Graves felt uncomfortably aware of his tongue, and the placement of his hands. God, his heart was hammering. He could feel it in his chest and the pit of his stomach. He needed a drink. When did he become so pathetic?

On the way back to his room, he reached out to wipe down the mirror with one twitching hand, and the sight of Credence’s eyes staring back at him hit him like a hex to the heart.

His wand was in his hand _(when had he drawn it?)_ and his mouth was dry _(God, he needed a drink,)_ and his other hand stayed firmly planted on the mirror, where Credence, from his side, had put up one of his hands to meet it.

He looked stricken. Graves could see the frustration in his eyes now replaced by relief, the quivering of his lips, the red, raw skin of his fists where he’d been pounding them against the mirror. Darkness surrounded him; he looked as though he were peering in at Graves through a window at midnight.

It occurred to Graves that he’d probably been yelling this whole time, unseen and unheard.

“Oh Cree,” he groaned, pressing his forehead to the glass. Credence mirrored him, putting their foreheads together till they were almost touching. He was saying something, but Graves could not hear it.

“I’m going to get you out of there,” Graves said firmly, slipping almost unwillingly into the cold, analytical mindset of an auror. “You’re fine. You are going to be fine.”

He said this more for his own benefit than Credence’s, who, judging by the horrified look on his face, had just realized that he could not hear Graves any more than Graves could hear him.

“There’s a lot here,” he continued, pulling away from the mirror to look at the frame. Dark wood, cracked along the grain in some places and faintly warm to the touch. He ran two fingers under the frame and felt the unmistakable bumpy intricacies of arithmetic sigils. “There’s arithmancy here, and probably an enchantment . . . blood-and-wood spells even, spells of Intent . . . but arithmancy is at the heart of it.”

He thought of Avery from Accounts and his fists clenched on the mirror-frame. “This is a fairly simple compound curse,” he said sternly to Credence, in a faintly accusatory way that he realized was probably unfair. “It can be broken, and it will be broken. Wait for me to act, and do _not_ let the shadows out. Don’t do it, you might break the mirror, and I,” he swallowed, started again, “and I don’t know what would happen to you if the mirror broke, so, don’t do _anything,_ Cree.”

Credence waited until his lips stopped moving, then nodded encouragingly. He was mouthing something. It looked like “Breathe.”

Graves took a deep breath, exhaled. His next words he enunciated clearly:

“I am going to get you out of there, Cree. Don’t worry.”

Behind Credence, an elderly woman faded up from the darkness and spat at the mirror-glass.

“I knew it was you,” Graves said shakily, wishing he could feel surprise, but feeling only pity. “I knew you could never let me be happy in this house.”

Credence frowned, turned to look behind him, and before Graves could cry out, the specter of the Old Widow Graves had seized him and dragged him back into the darkness, out of sight.


End file.
